As life (and business) gets busier and busier, now more than ever, business owners all around Australia are reporting they are feeling the effects and deathly grip known as anxiety and overwhelm.

Today, I want to share with you a very practical system that you can use every time you feel stuck on the inside of your business.

Before we even begin, I want to put your mind to ease. As a business owner, feeling anxious, overwhelmed and discouraged at times is 100% normal. Anyone who has been in business for more than 30 days knows this.

The realities are, that business is hard. If you’re striving for delivering more value than anyone else in your marketplace, then it’s natural that you are going to be pushing your limits. But if you don’t have a system to manage this process, what ends up happening is you’ll start spending too much time worrying, and not enough time winning.

It’s my goal to help you navigate the feelings of anxiety and overwhelm as a business owner, so you can get back on track to win.

While many may attempt to complicate it, anxiety is actually very simply defined. It’s fearing that somewhere in the future you will experience more pain than pleasure.

Now, these feelings might be rational or irrational, imagined or real. But in any case, the result for you is the same..you’re stuck, suffering and have no idea what to do next!

The good news is, below I have prepared a simple system for you to follow and implement. This means you’ll now have the tools to free yourself from feeling stuck, and actually get moving again.

Let’s do it.

Step 1: Identify What is Causing the Anxiety

The first thing you’ll want to do, is get really clear on what is causing the problem. Ask yourself a series of questions (sample below), until you’ve clearly identified what the problem actually is.

To do this, I recommend you use your $5 psychologist (a $5 hardcover journal you can carry everywhere you go) and write (+ answer) the following questions.

Keep writing until you feel confident you know you’ve ‘got it’

What is truly causing this challenge?

What is it I am avoiding?

What am I really fearing here?

Why am I feeling this way?

You may wish to bullet point your answers, or have a conversation with yourself. Either way, the goal is the same: find the root cause.

(Note: These questions are purposely asking the same question in different ways. This is designed to help you see the problem from slightly different angles. You do not have to answer all four, but instead, just ask one at a time until you’ve nailed the problem.)

Step 2: What is the Goal?

Now you’ve identified what is causing the issue, you’ll notice the reason you’re feeling anxious about it, is that you’re not where you’d like to be.

You may not be making the money you’d like make, you may not be attracting the quality leads that you’d love to turn a healthy profit, or maybe you’re just overwhelmed with the entire process.

In any case, if you want to start making progress again and breakthrough this plateau, you must define the goal.

What I’ve found from working with service based business owners from a variety of industries, is very often, more than 50% of the anxiety and overwhelm they’re feeling, is due to a lack of clarity over what the actual goal is.

So what is your goal?

How much money do you want to make?

How many clients do you want to work with each day, week, month and year?

How big do you want your business

What does a perfect business look like for you?

We’re going to get to the planning section next, but if you don’t define where you want to be before moving on, you won’t be able to solve the problem.

Take the time to discover what success looks like for you.

Step 3: Build An Action Plan

OK, you’ve now discovered the cause of your anxiety and overwhelm, and also identified where you would like to be (your goal), it’s time to now build the plan to get you there.

To help in this process, I want you to think about the last three big things you’ve accomplished in your life. Anything that you’re proud of yourself for achieving.

Now I want you to ask yourself, how many of these happened by accident? The answer will always be zero. Anything worthwhile that you’ve achieved once started with a plan. That plan was then acted up, and eventually, through hard work, persistence and some creative thought, it resulted in an outcome. It’s simple. Plans work.

It’s true that success is never linear, and that in pursuit of a goal, you’ll often be taken off the original path (in order to learn some necessary lessons along your personal journey), but the one thing I know about success for sure is if you don’t have a plan to achieve it, you’ll never get there.

To do this, you’ll need to think about where you are now, where you want to be (both defined in steps 1 and 2) and then brainstorm every step in the process to get there.

This will take work. New results require new thinking.

Again, using your journal, outline, brainstorm and detail the elements of the plan to get clear on the action steps (inputs) required. While the outcome is what you desire, that is not within your control. Inputs however are. And those are what’s going to make it happen.

For example, let’s just say your goal was to earn $200,000 in personal income, here are some of the elements that need to go into your plan…

How many clients do I need per week/month/year to make this?

How many products to do I need to sell?

How many appointments do I need to set each week/month?

How will I secure those appointments?

How much will I invest into marketing, advertising, savings, and growth?

Keep thinking until you have clarity over the steps and build it into a plan to help you get there.

Step 4: Tracking Progress

Lastly, if you want to ensure you’re winning, you must keep on top of progress. This is the step that most people neglect. They might enjoy the planning process, or the actioning, but when it comes to reviewing and tracking, many shy away from it. It’s most likely because in the beginning, it’s easy to get away with NOT doing this. Because the little things are just that...little.

As Jim Rohn says: ‘the easiest things to do, are also the easiest things NOT to do.’

Soon enough however, from little things, big things grow. And like a snowball rolling down a mountain, small problems neglected start to gain significant momentum. Soon enough, just like that snowball, those small things become very difficult to stop.

When I first started in my business, no-one showed me the crucial numbers to track. I really was flying blind a lot of the time, and was just using my bank account at the end of the month to track whether I was doing good, or doing bad. That’s a terrible way to run a business.

To help you avoid that pain of confusion and anxiety around not knowing how you’re doing, I want to share with you the crucial numbers you’ll want to track on the inside of your business if you wish to stay on top of things.

Here is a snapshot of what I (and all of my clients) fill in weekly. You may wish to start using something similar in your business. I promise you it will remove a huge chunk of your anxiety and overwhelm around the numbers, and be one of the wisest investments of time you ever make. 5 minutes a week, to save hours upon hours of frustration.

Don’t let the snowball get too big. Stay on top of things and track the numbers that count. This will help.

Trusting this all makes sense for you.

Remember, in business (and life), the realer you get with yourself, the realer life things will get around you. The key (as with all matters of importance), is to take full responsibility for where you are, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.

The above system will help...but only if you use it.

Let me know if there are any questions by dropping a comment below - I’d be happy to clarify anything that will help you get back on track.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make on the inside of your business (that will cause great frustration while it continues to remain unidentified) is trying to dictate to your clients what you want for them, rather than simply listening to what they want, and doing your best to deliver that.

Great service businesses become great, by serving their clients.

I know it sounds simple (which is why it’s probably so often overlooked), but you must find out what value looks like for your client and do everything you can to provide that for them.

For example:

Some clients KNOW exactly what to do, and even HOW to do it, but they aren’t sure how to hold themselves accountable or they need someone to keep them on track with their pre-defined strategy.

In this case, they don’t need education, or strategy, or your help to switch their game plan…they just need someone to check-in and hold them accountable to their word.

Let’s look at another example that’s the opposite of the above.

You may work with a client who is able to hold themselves accountable to their word, but doesn’t have the education or the game plan to actually follow. In this case, they are going to highly value your help in working out how to get them from point A to point B, but they’re going to require a lot less attention for accountability.

I have a saying: ‘Don’t spend your clients’ value dollars for them.’ What I mean by this, is each and every client sees value in completely different ways. And it’s wise to identify exactly what that is for them.

Here are some big ones:

They want your accountability and for you to keep them on track.

They want a strategy to execute.

They need tools and tactics to get the job done at an actionable level.

They want to meet others in a similar space and not feel so alone.

They want to fill up their tank with information and education to go back and implement what they’ve learned.

There is a great book by best selling author, Gary Chapman, called “The Five Love Languages” (maybe you’ve read it?). Inside, Chapman talks about the five types of ways that we show love to our partner. They are: words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service, gift giving, and quality time.

The biggest caveat of all of this however, (and one of the main purposes of the book), is to highlight to the reader, that often the way we show love, is how WE like to receive love…which is not necessarily how the other person likes to receive it.

For example, just because you love receiving gifts, doesn’t mean others do. Sometimes they just love to spend time with you.

Well…the same goes in business relationships. It’s always wise to discover exactly how the client sees value and get busy delivering that to them.

As you know, it’s 15 times cheaper to maintain a client relationship than it is to go out there and find a new one. It’s costly, time consuming and to be honest, not the most effective use of your time.

Take the time to sit down with a piece of paper and ask yourself how each of your top 10, 25 or 50 clients identify’s value (from their point of view), and then perform an honest appraisal of whether you are providing it to them or not.

In business, whether you’re aware of it or not, the client is continually asking themselves: “is this person delivering on their promise…or not?”

With the modern day client, there is no grey area.

If you know you are, keep it up, if not, maybe it’s time to make a switch.

It's day 1 of a new ketogenic 'way of life' for me here at HW HQ, and I'm pumped for what's to come over the following weeks and months. It's going to be an interesting challenge.

Having made some incredible progress with Keto a couple of years ago, I know the power of the high fat, mod protein, low carb on my body (and mind...seriously my thinking becomes crystal clear!).

And yet, for some reason (lifestyle and mind was not conditioned enough at the time) I 'fell off the wagon' and never continued with it some years ago. Well, it's time to give it another proper crack and hit my long-awaited (never attained) goal of 9% bodyfat.

The thing is, intellectually I know after a few weeks I always feel so great on it. Once the results come, is not hard to continue.

And that's the key to all of life really. Sticking at something long enough, to show yourself that the results will come...But only after the work has been put in first.

To win, we're going to need to gain and gather momentum. Starting is always the hardest part. With anything. Dieting. Business. Social anxiety.

But once you have that momentum, the work suddenly becomes a lot easier. Day by day, inch by inch, the work starts to become second nature as you continue to make progress towards your chosen goal.

Will you always feel like it? No. Is it wise to shut off the emotions and just do the work anyway? Yes.

As the saying goes, nothing worth having comes easy.

When I was writing my first book, Why Wait To Be Great? I would rise at 3:50am 6 mornings a week, and write for 2 hours straight at a local 24 hour cafe. Within 8 months I had a completed book in the hands of hungry leaders all around the world.

Some days sucked and all I could think about was bed. Other days I couldn't stop. But I can tell you one thing for sure, if I allowed my emotions to dictate whether or not I did the work, I certainly wouldn't be sitting here calling myself an author.

It's time you did the same. Learn how to embrace the suck, show up anyway and do the damn work.

Because every day you do, becomes another boost to your momentum counter and leads you another step closer to the goal you've chosen.

In life, you can either be your own best friend, or your own worst enemy. The challenge is, most of the time, anyone with a bias for achievement and potential exploration, will often be the latter. Feelings of never being good enough or that there's always more to be done, (over)populate the mind and send us into overdrive.

Instead of allowing yourself to accept the anxiety that comes along with the above (something I am personally all too familiar with), I wanted to share a simple exercise for you to try in order to make sense of the current chaos, and get through it alive.

The particular scene on the screen is a snapshot of your current life. Your friends are there, your profession is set, you can see your body, your mind, your loves ones, and most importantly, the thoughts running through your head.

Right now, are youthe hero, the villain or the victim of that story?

Too often, we accept our lives as they are, without ever questioning the possibility that things could be different. Instead, we allow our body and mind to lay dormant, while our soul screams from the depths of our heart to be released from the prison called 'Fear'.

Thing is, we all long to be the hero and make a difference in the world, and yet, it seems near impossible to ever imagine ourselves as the Clark Kent's or Bruce Wayne's, when we're sitting on the sidelines, struggling to even make it through the month, the week or the day without feeling beat up and battered.

Here's the thing...whether you like it or not, you are already the hero of your own journey...it just depends what stage you're currently in that determines how you feel about it.

Allow me to share with you the general structure of all good storytelling based movies that come out of Hollywood (something which Joseph Campbell called 'The Hero's Journey').

Basically, it goes that a normal guy/gal is living a normal life when something happens that suggests an adventure is on the horizon.

At first, they resist the challenge, before meeting someone (a mentor) who highlights to them that things could be different.

The power of curiosity and becoming a more evolved version of themselves is enticing, so they take on the challenge.

They'll then face a whole bunch of surface level challenges, meet new friends, gain a few 'haters' and continue walking this exciting path.

That is, until they come across the real challenge. The 'innermost cave' - which is the technical term for the thing that scares them the most. Inside that cave is the ultimate 'baddy'.

In order to defeat the fear, however, they'll need to muster every bit of courage they've got and walk into that cave alone to face it head on (it must always be done alone).

After nearly dying, they'll find a way to defeat this fear and return back to the homeland as a completely transformed human being, capable of much more than they ever thought possible.

Now, whether you're conscious to it or not, you're on the exact same journey. The Hero's Journey is life. Instead of wondering why things aren't the way you want them to be, maybe it's time to ask, what am I avoiding? Why won't I enter my innermost cave?

Alternatively, if things are going smoothly for you right now, perhaps you're trying to ignore the next call to adventure, and stopping yourself from becoming more of who you need to be?

It's time to get honest with yourself and decide right here, right now that you are the hero of your own movie, and instead of sitting back and allowing your fears to take control, you jump in (head first) and face the fears that are holidng you back.

As we progress further and further into the new age of fitness, the idea of simply being a personal trainer is quickly becoming redundant. The new standard is to be a coach.

In a four-part series, I've been writing called: "Death of the Personal Trainer" (this is part 1) I share what you can do to transform from PT to coach, which I hope is helpful for you and your business.

Along your journey inside the business of fitness, you will meet two different types of people. I wanted to introduce them to you here, so you can be aware when you do see them. They're Mr Gym Guy and Mr Business Man.

Mr Gym Guy loves his curls, feeling the burn, getting his nutrition on point and eating from Tupperwear.

Mr Business Owner loves creating new products, serving his customers, carefully watching his bottom line, and enjoys planning for the future.

There is no right or wrong. In fact both are great people. It's not a matter of personality, it's a matter of who wants to reach their desired goals

See if the goal is to compete on stage, hit a new deadlift PR or show off your great results on social media, than most Gym Guy's (and girls) are doing a great job.

But if your goal is to create a business that just works, gives you the income you desire and allows you to create long term freedom, than Mr Business Man

There really is nothing other than outcomes. We get out what we put in. That's the best thing about life. You're rewarded by effort, not luck.

I've learned in my life, that if you don't ever define a future for yourself, nature will give you the bare minimum. And so if you want a big future, it's time to start taking big action.

Invest the time this week to discover what that future might look like and how you can go about making it happen.

If you would like a little boost of inspiration on the way, be sure to sign up to my daily emails where I will push you each day to realise the dream that exists within.